


Sight Through Touch

by RainbowMagicMarker



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Blind Roy, Gen, Possible Implied EdRoy, Post-Ending, Recovery, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4605522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainbowMagicMarker/pseuds/RainbowMagicMarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When unwillingly separated from his brother after the events with Father, Ed takes some time to visit Roy and show him what he's regained, and thank the Colonel for his help. He fails to take into account the inherent flaw in this plan. Despite the oversight, Roy appreciates the company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sight Through Touch

The quiet is rare. It's been a constant stream of people in and out of his hospital room the past few days, but eventually someone has to take hold of the chaos that erupted in the wake of King Bradley's death and the Day of Reckoning, and Roy would be damned if he wasn't going to have a hand in things. Maybe not his own hands, not at the moment, but his team knew how to speak for him. He only wished Riza was out there too. 

Reflexively he turned his head towards her bed, he knew she wasn't there, she had been taken to physical therapy as part of the recovery process and she'd be back in an hour or two, but he wasn't used to not being able to see that fact for himself. 

He wasn't sure how he really felt about the quiet. Too much time to think, to question what the universe had in store for him now. Roy Mustang was not a religious man, and even if he had been the sick irony of his current condition would have shattered that belief anyway. He knew enough of what was going on to realize he would be promoted, whenever someone got enough of a handle on the situation to file all the paperwork. He also knew enough to know that he was probably facing an honorable discharge and early retirement. Hawkeye couldn't hover over his shoulder all the time, she had a job and expectations of her own, it had worked in the heat of the moment but it wasn't like it was a permanent solution and he knew that. 

The sound of a familiar, uneven gait was more of a relief than Roy would be willing to admit, and even if he couldn't see he could pretty well imagine what was standing in the doorway of his room. "Hey Colonel." The alternating steps of flesh and automail crossed the room to take a seat beside Roy's bed, and reflexively he tried to follow the sound with his nonexistent gaze. 

From the slight change in Ed's breathing he had a feeling that he wasn't even close. "I'm surprised to see you away from your brother." Roy was quick to shove aside the thought, hoping to goad the younger alchemist into speaking so he could adjust his positional awareness, make a better attempt at meeting his subordinates gaze. The fact that he couldn't be sure he was even in the right vicinity was infuriating. 

"PT or something, Doc said I was distracting him so they threw me out. Thought I'd swing by." The chair creaks and he can imagine Ed stretched out with his fingers interlaced behind his head and the chair propped up on only two of its legs. There's a clear restlessness in his tone, he's obviously not as casual with the idea of being separated from his brother as he's trying to sound. Roy had to wonder what kind of threats the doctors made to actually get him to leave. Mostly he wondered it to keep himself from thinking about how he ended up one of the least wounded of those who had faced the homonculi, and how that was related to his current condition. Absently he flexed his hands, tracing the scars in his palms left behind by Wrath's swords. 

"It's looking like I'll have to forgive that debt." He changed the subject, trying to keep a casual tone as he turned his head away from the sound of Fullmetal's breathing, towards where there should be a window. 

"What de-" Ed cut himself off, falling silent, his breathing changed, fabric shifted, Roy jumped at the sudden clatter of the chair falling back onto all four legs. "Like hell you are Mustang." There was a seething rage in his tone that he was evidently trying to swallow down, though Roy wasn't sure why. He was just thankful that whatever it was that Ed was pissed at, it wasn't him for once. "I'm not done borrowing money from you, and I'm sure as hell not going to stay in debt to someone like you." There was that tone, the one that meant there was no room to argue, the one that had earned him the name _Fullmetal_. "So you better just figure it out." And that was that, as far as Edward was concerned. 

As much as he wanted to just let it end at that, he needed to be realistic. It just wasn't practical. "Fullm-" 

"And anyway." Ed cut him off, and he could imagine the blond waving aside Roy's words, "I wanted to show you something." There was a moment of grand silence, and Roy frowned, his complaints forgotten. He waited, maintaining his own silence, for Ed to figure out just what was wrong with that statement. It took the younger alchemist what should have been an embarrassingly long time to realize why, exactly, Roy was so silent. "Oh." He breathed, held it for a moment, and exhaled slowly to regain control of his emotions. "Sorry, I- gimme your hand." Roy thought about denying him, questioning his motives, but there was something about the quiet sound of Ed's tone that prompted him to lift up his hand and hold it out in the direction of Ed's voice. 

A warm hand wrapped around his wrist, pulling his hand forward, guiding it against flesh. Roy frowned, blinked his confusion, until Ed prompted him. "Well? Come on Mustang." Roy moved, slowly, brushing his hands over skin. It took a second, he was hardly used to observing the world in such a hand's on fashion, but eventually he allowed his hands to move, felt the bones beneath the flesh, the frail feeling of unused muscles. His fingers trailed down to a wrist where he could feel each individual bone protruding from skin. The sharp jut of the ulna before it dipped into the carpals, he traced each small bone there before following the lines of the metacarpals down to the gap formed by knuckles. The delicate bones could almost be likened to an hourglass now that he felt them, now that he couldn't see the lines beneath skin. He ran the pad of his thumb over the rough edges of freshly cut fingernails. 

His frown deepened again, moving his hand back up, feeling the veins along the forearm, brushing over the bend of an elbow, over the ligaments and muscles that gave it movement, up the only slightly thicker lines of what must have been a humerus, though there wasn't enough muscle there to give it proper definition. Rumpled cotton met his fingers where a shirt sleeve had been pulled up, and he ran from there over the bend of a shoulder, the dip of a neck where the beat of a rapid pulse drummed against his fingers before they moved on to rest against a soft cheek. He lingered there for a long time in silence, listening to the shallow breathing, feeling it ghosting over his fingers as the tendrils of a slow realization ghosted through his mind. 

"Your arm?" It was as much question as it was realization, an eyebrow quirked upwards as he turned his blackened gaze to where he now knew Ed's face was. "Your _right_ arm." The one he'd lost, the one that had been metal and wiring for so long, and now it was flesh. Some of it lost, obviously, to the other side, and yet a little time and training would bring it up to speed. There was distinct awe and reverence in Roy's voice. An impossible task that had been laid before them, to get their bodies back, and he had known that Al was flesh and bone and blood again, Riza had told him that, but this was something else entirely. "Your leg?" Ed's gait had been the same as it always had when he'd entered the room, but the words spilled from Roy anyway. 

"Still automail, probably always will be, but two out of three impossible things ain't bad." Ed shrugged casually, and Roy could feel the corner of his mouth pull up in a satisfied grin beneath the palm of his hand. It was then that Roy realized where his hand rested, how long it had been resting there, and he jerked back like he'd suddenly been shocked, grasping one hand with the other as the warmth of Ed's skin faded away. A moment of silence passed, and some part of him half expected Ed to pull his hand back, but the moment passed and Roy cleared his throat. 

"You did more than two impossible things Fullmetal; I'd say you earned that arm back." There was pride in his voice, maybe he hadn't always pushed Ed towards the best choices, but it was good to see that the broken child in a wheelchair had not only got his arm back, but been distinctly responsible for the people of Amestris still being alive. The young alchemist held more responsibility for that fact than Roy himself did, as much as the colonel hated to admit that he had been mostly useless through the fight. 

He heard Ed stand, knowing that the man was going to flee the praise, but grateful for the visit none the less. "Yeah well, I'm just glad I got Al's body back. Now I just gotta see if I can get him back from the doctors." The uneven gait moved away, back towards the door, and something in Roy wanted to reach out and stop him, ask him not to leave, at least not until Riza came back, but he swallowed the desire. 

"You two have any plans?" He asked instead, just to put the silence off a little bit longer. 

"If they ever let Al out of here we're gonna go back to Resembool, at least until he recovers. After that, well," There was a pause, and he could picture the nonchalant shrug that Ed filled it with, even if he couldn't see the actual motion. "Dunno, never really planned that far out." It had never really occurred to Roy whether or not the two of them had ever really _planned_ on getting their bodies back, it had always been about whether or not it was _possible_ , and if so _how_. 

"Well, come back before you two head out." Roy wasn't sure where the words came from, but he felt them strongly anyway, "I'm sure the Lieutenant would like to see, too." He added, hoping that Ed wouldn't take it as an afterthought. That's what it was, of course, but he still didn't want Ed to know that he just wanted to see him again before he disappeared for who knew how long. And anyway, it was probably true. 

"Will do, though next time don't expect I'm going to let you feel me up." The joke was light, sarcastic, and something else in the tone that Roy couldn't quite place, but at least the promise was reassuring, "See you around Colonel." There was movement, and then it stopped again, "Won't be able to call you that much longer, there's word of a promotion floating around." And then the door closed, and he was alone in the silence again, alone with the darkness and his own thoughts. But Ed would come back, and that was comforting; he'd gotten used to seeing the Elric brothers on such a regular basis he didn't much like the thought that they might be gone for good.


End file.
